Though experiences of surfing the web I have made some good discoveries and some bad ones.
One bad one that I see time and again is miss-spelt web address which leads to an undesirable web site where a hacker or porn peddler is lying in wait to accost us or worse steals our information. Now I am not perfect and I am a horrible speller, thank you who ever, made "Spell Check" but from my experiences, spelling is very important to be proficient in if you are going to manually type in web addresses!
For example
BBC News Wrote:
A Home Office radio commercial publicizing a child protection website has been banned because it could have led people to pornographic material.
a listener who miss-spelt the address found a series of links led her to adult porn websites.
The advert said: "Giving out personal info could let a pedophile track you down. Be smart online, be safe online."
But instead of typing 'u' in the web address, the woman wrote 'you', taking her to a different website.
Read more http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5277012.stm
I have fallen into this trap many time and became so angered at my self that I made myself a list rules to follow and now I am passing on to all who want to be safer on the internet.
Due Diligence’s: Web Address Rules to Stay Safe.
1. Have the exact web address before you type it into your web browser
2. If you don't know the exact web addresses do not guess it.
3. Use a well know search engine (www.google.com) to search for the proper address.
4. Read the listed description in search engine of the search results. The description will tell what is on the site and supply a link to the web. Always read the link address if your not sure of the site legitimate; yes even hackers sites make it into goggle! If it is a well know website the address should be simple and straight forward. I.e. www.mircrosoft.com
5. http://www.ask.com has a new feature where you can preview the web site before you click on to see if it the site you want. http://www.ask.com/web?q=microsoft&qsrc=0&o=333&l=dir just hover your mouse over the icon of the binocular below the description to preview.